Content is King

One of the most important things you can do to improve your website in the eyes of the search engines is have fresh, unique content. In order to keep their customers happy, search engines need to provide the most relevant and up to date information. If the search engine results pages (SERPs) are filled with spam or low quality sites, users will not continue to use that search engine.

As a result, search engines want to make sure you have fresh unique content on your site before presenting it to their users.

When a search engine spider crawls your page, it is looking at the frequency and amount of keywords on your web page. It is looking at the amount of repeated content as well as duplicate content. It also looks for any new content that has been added since the last time your page was spidered.

To keep the search engines happy, you should avoid duplicate content on your website.

Make sure the content on your website is not found anywhere else on the Internet. You can check this by using a site such as Copyscape. If you are using content that is on someone else’s webpage, you can be penalized in the search engine rankings.

The frequency with which your site is updated is also an important factor to search engines. If your site has not been updated in several months or even years, there is a high likelihood that the information presented is out of date or no longer relevant. If you consistently update your website with new, unique content, you will gain an advantage over other sites that update less frequently.

Links, Links, and More Links

It’s no secret that search engines look for links to your website when evaluating it’s importance.

Simply put, the more links you have coming into your website the better. There are other factors even more important than quantity however. The quality of the sites that link to you as well as the type of links that are found (one-way links, two-way links) and also important to search engines.

If you want your website to rank highly in search engine results, make sure you are consistently updating your website with new, unique content and are continually getting other quality websites to link to you. Slow and steady wins the race.

More than a numbers game, the type of links to your website are also important. A one-way link is when someone places a link to your site on their website without asking you to link to their site in return. One-way links are viewed as more “natural” and therefore more valuable in the eyes of the search engines.

While the process of gaining links to your website is time consuming, the results are definitely worth the effort.

How to begin building one-way links

Research is an important first step when building links. You first have to decide what search terms or phrases you want to rank highly for. There are various tools available to help you with this step such as Wordtracker’s keyword suggestion tool and Google’s AdWords keyword tool.

Once you have compiled your keyword list, you then should identify the authority sites in your niche or market. Do a simple Google search and evaluate the sites that rank highly for the same keywords you are targeting.

Spend some time visiting these sites. While evaluating each site, make note of the type of content they have as well as their contact information.

Next you should then begin contacting the owners of these sites by email.

Keep your email short and to the point. Introduce yourself and your website. Tell the site owner why you are contacting them and why they should link to you. Don’t use a form email. Write it yourself and ideally include some information that shows you actually viewed this person’s website. The message should be unique to your website and your personality.

The next step is to follow up with the site owners if you don’t here back from them after a few days.

Again, keep your email short and to the point. Webmasters get a lot of email. Show them you value their time by not wasting it with a long email. Reiterate how both your website visitors and theirs would benefit from a relationship. Ask them to please reply to your email, even if they are not interested. This way, you will know if they are actually reading your emails.

Another method you can use to contact website owners is to us the phone. In this age of email, we ofter forget we can contact people using the telephone. Obviously you need to have the person’s phone number in order to call them. If it’s not listed on the website, you can try checking the site’s whois record.

Some people don’t like to use the phone but that is precisely why they method is effective. You have to do that which others are unable or unwilling to do if you want to be successful. Give some thought to what you want to say to the site owner before you call them.

Building links to your website is not difficult. Though time consuming, link building is a critical piece of the puzzle for achieving high search engine rankings.

Black Hat Techniques

There are many techniques known as black hat techniques. They are not exactly illegal, but they are unethical because they rely on tricking site visitors or the search engines themselves. There are several good examples of black hat SEO techniques. One is the use of keyword spamming to make a site appear more relevant to a topic than it really is. Site owners who use keyword spamming produce content that is stuffed with keywords. The content usually makes no sense, but the owners use the keyword-stuffed drivel to trick the search engines into ranking them higher. Any technique that relies on trickery to achieve a higher search engine ranking should be avoided, or you risk damaging your reputation in the long run.

Plagiarized Content

Adding content to your site is one of the most important search engine optimization techniques. When you need to add hundreds of pages of content to your site, it may be tempting to copy articles from another Web site or rewrite the words of another author so that they qualify as unique content for your site. Plagiarism is stealing, plain and simple. Not only will you run the risk of being sued for copyright infringement, you can also be de-indexed by the search engines if anyone reports the content you are using as stolen. In addition, your reputation as a business owner can be severely compromised. If you are overwhelmed at the thought of writing a lot of content, or you just don’t have the writing skills necessary, hire a writer to produce the content for you. It will be more expensive than plagiarizing content to begin with, but it will save you a lot in embarrassment and legal fees.

False Claims in Content

Posting content on your site also gives you the additional responsibility of making sure that everything you post is accurate. If you post information that is untrue about someone, you may find yourself facing a lawsuit for libel. Stick to posting factual information on your site. If you want to post a negative remark about a business, be sure to back up your claims or note that you are simply stating your opinion, not solid facts. This can help you avoid lawsuits and help you keep your stellar reputation intact.

Video blogs, shortly known as vlogs, are basically blogs whose content is primarily video. Aside from that variation in content, vlogs are functionally identical to their text-based predecessors.

Amateur-Friendly

As video recording equipment became more affordable and video editing software became more available, more people were willing to try vlogging. With decent video cameras starting at a couple of hundred dollars and the software for less than a hundred online, the field of digital video was opened up to just about anyone.

Casual users and previous bloggers saw vlogging as a new way to record their ideas and experiences online. Enthusiasts and non-professional filmmakers could now distribute their works across a wide international audience. To Steve Garfield, it was the next big thing.

The Vlog Man

Steve Garfield was one of the largest proponents of vlogging and is one of the first vloggers on the planet. He had seen videos posted on other sites and wondered if he could do the same on his mostly text blog. After some experimentation, he was able to make his first vlog entry on January 1, 2004 pronouncing that year as “The Year of the Video Blog.” He co-founded an online group dedicated to vlogging, the first of its kind.

Originals Not Required

Vlogging was seen as a new creative outlet for artists and amateurs the world over. One could start a vlog even without his own original video. Mash-ups or reinventions of current video items such as spoofs are a common item in blogs. Works of VJ art or video remixes have also found a distribution outlet in vlogs. Many vlogs don’t even bother to modify the content; some vloggers post clips or advertisements that they found interesting from television and movies. While some corporations have seen this as unauthorized use of copyrighted content, some have also taken advantage of the situation as an opportunity for free marketing of their content.

Vlog Now

Vlogging is a fairly simple process. You just take some source video – it could be your own or an original video from someone else – and post it on a vlog server or a blog server that accepts video content. Many blog hosts now allow bloggers to post video content as well as text. If you want to edit the video before putting it online, there are many video editing solutions available – several of them are free. Movie Maker, which is a bundled program with recent versions of the Windows OS, is a great example of a basic editing tool.

Power to the People

With the advent of vlogging, just about anyone could send out a message to the rest of the world through footage, a video clip or a documentary. The power to create and wield such media is no longer exclusive to large media companies but is now available to ordinary people.

SEO Myth: SEO Amounts to Trickery

Many people might say that search engine optimizations amounts to nothing more than trickery. However, those people don’t understand what search engine optimization really is. Some black hat optimizers do use sneaky methods such as cloaking, keyword spamming, and using doorway pages for their sites, but those who are optimizing their sites ethically know that there is no trickery involved. In fact, ethical optimization actually improves sites for visitors. It makes each site more relevant to what visitors are looking for and offers more specific information. There’s no trickery involved in improving a site, even if it happens to result in increased sales and profits.

SEO Myth: SEO Does Not Improve Business

Every single company with an optimized site is not going to see an increase in sales volume or profits. Once SEO has been done, there are a host of other factors that can impact business including product and service quality, pricing, and customer service satisfaction. However, SEO can be combined with high quality products and excellent customer service to improve business even more. SEO can help you bring more targeted traffic to your site, which means the people visiting your online business will be more likely to have an interest in buying your products and services. If you have something worth purchasing and you have a good reputation, SEO can certainly improve your business.

SEO Myth: SEO is Too Expensive

Many people think that search engine optimization is too expensive. While some optimization services do cost thousands of dollars, this is a drop in the bucket compared to the kind of money you could be losing by not optimizing your site and ranking well in the search engines. In addition, there are several SEO techniques that anyone can use for free so that they can spend their dollars on more advanced services that are provided by a professional optimization firm. Using these techniques can help reduce some of the costs associated with search engine optimization.

If you want to improve your online business results without wasting time and money, familiarize yourself with some of these myths and find ways to work around them. You’ll find that search engine optimization is a valuable undertaking for almost any online business, as long as you’re willing to put the needed money and effort into optimizing your business site.

Blogging in Stereo

As it became easier to record and manipulate sounds on the computer, more and more people wanted to try creating their own audio media. This resulted in what were almost like radio shows – people talking and discussing a particular topic or set of topics that just needed to be broadcast. Some, to an extent, were able to do so by posting their individual audio files – known to podcasters as episodes – on their own sites. Later on, web syndication – technology that lets one select websites, receive real-time updates about any changes on these sites and even automatically download new content – allowed people to automatically get their episodes as soon as they came out. This led to podcast being likened to ‘internet radio.’

Listeners to podcasts simply have to look for the feed with the topic they prefer – tens of thousands now exist in Apple’s iTunes listing alone – and then subscribe to this feed. A program, usually a web browser or audio software, will then begin checking that feed for updates and automatically download new files.

Opening New Possibilities

Podcasting has opened up many opportunities for podcasters. For example, professionals and enthusiasts could share their knowledge or discuss developments in their respective fields and then broadcast them out to listeners, just like any other radio show. Podcasting also made it possible for ordinary Joes and Janes to play at being newscasters who report current events; some even do so from the scene. Amateur musicians and DJs are also into podcasting because it allows them to relay their music to listeners and then get feedback through emails or comments on their site.

Many listeners prefer podcasts to traditional internet radio broadcasts because podcast software allow them to pick exactly the programs they want. This has resulted in customized programming – programming that is perfectly tailored to the listener’s preferences. There are no ads, just content. Podcasts also allow people on the go to listen through their handheld media players.

Multipurpose Podcasts

Podcast technology has already been used for many purposes. Newspapers have integrated podcasts into their range of services by providing up-to-date, audio versions of many of the news items that they print. Podcasts have also earned their place in the field of education where professors and teachers record their lectures among other audio content for podcasting to their students. Interviews with experts and professionals on a wide range of topics have also found a larger listener base with the use of podcasts.

Podcasts are a great example of how the power to create and distribute digital media has now been acquired by ordinary people. A type of content that has previously been the monopoly of big radio stations with big studios and licensed frequencies has now become common productions of average individuals in their living rooms with personal computers and internet access.

Social media, as suggested by its name, is characterized by its social aspect. The methods used for distributing social media content almost always involve a community or, at the very least, some form of interpersonal exchange. Social media also encourages feedback from viewers or receivers of the media in an almost conversational manner, as opposed to the one-way methods employed by traditional broadcast and print media. It also encourages mutual viewing of media; as you access other people’s content, your content becomes available to them in turn.

Personal Production Companies

The rapid advancement of digital and telecommunications technology in recent years has greatly contributed to the birth and popularity of social media. It used to be that only certain individuals or organizations had the capability to produce media content. As recording tools like digital cameras, voice recorders and computers became more accessible to the public, everyday people began creating their own digital content. Improvements in the communications industry, which led to cheaper bandwidth prices, encouraged people to post more media online. A recent development, tagged content, has allowed people to find particular content using search engines like Google.

The Many Faces of Social Media

There are many ways through which social media can be distributed. Some of them are listed below.

Web logs, more commonly known as blogs, are basically online journals maintained by any number of individuals called bloggers. The content is primarily text, although images, photo and video are not uncommon. The topics of blogs range from the specific – the ongoing development of a game, for example – to the general, such as a record of one’s everyday activities. Anyone passing by could leave a comment, and fellow bloggers could link blogs to theirs and thereby create a network of blogs. The prevalence of Apple’s iPod music player also spawned an audio counterpart, the podcast.

Social communities are a fairly recent addition to the list but have gained tremendous popularity worldwide. Sites such as Friendster and MySpace require a user to register and then create a profile that contains some personal information. Users are then free to customize their profiles with just about anything they wish. Other users find each other by searching through the use of a particular parameter like ‘interest.’ Social community sites allow users to add other people to their list of contacts. Users are also allowed to leave comments on other people’s pages.

Content communities work almost identically like social communities except for their focus on posted content. Sites like YouTube and Metacafe allow registered users to upload content, usually video, for other viewers to find and view. Users can also post comments on other users’ posted media.

Wikis – online information banks – are not new but have gained popularity recently with the birth of sites like Wikipedia. Wikis allow registered users to freely edit information found on the site.

Forums are a popular option when distributing specialized or specific types of content. Forums are usually composed of many members that are drawn together by a common focus, interest or social characteristics. A moderator sees to it that unwanted content is kept off the site.

Social media has reinvented the way people look at distributed content. Millions of people worldwide are currently registered members of at least one site and proceed to share photos, video, audio, and information to others. That number alone should be proof enough that social media has become just another fact of life..

The popularity of blogs has skyrocketed in recent years because of the greater availability of internet access and the creation of many free blog hosting services. Recently, blogs have also been seen as potential sources of income (particularly, advertising income) because of the traffic that their content can attract.

Blogs are considered to be one form of social media because readers can participate by leaving comments or feedback about the blog in general or on individual blog entries. It is also a common practice for bloggers to refer to each other in entries or to formally cite affiliated blogs through a blogroll or a listing of other blogs.

Blogs: A History

Blogs were formerly and more formally known as weblogs until 1999 when Peter Merholtz coined the shorter and more popular term. Blogs actually started earlier than most would suspect, with the first bloggers starting out around 1994. Some of these pioneers went on to contribute something to blogging. For instance, Brad Fitzpatrick made his mark through his 1999 creation, LiveJournal. Interest in blogs didn’t peak until the early 2000’s though; many blogging sites had less than a thousand users in the late 1990’s but had tens of millions by 2005.

The Many Faces of the Blog

Blogs have evolved from the basic online diary. The tech blog BoingBoing, for instance, has been developed to make it an ideal means for distributing news and information. Some companies have integrated blogs onto their websites so that users can readily see recent updates and developments. Many have turned their blogs into records of current events, usually accompanied by a critique. Numerous blogs also exist for the sole purpose of proclaiming the writer’s opinions.

Recently, some blogs have surfaced as alternative sources of news to complement the information on broadcast and print media. These are often filled with accounts of people who have intimate knowledge of events from crimes to large-scale social events.

The Freedom of Blogs

The increased use of blogging has led to several court cases in recent years, most of them involving one party defaming or posting negative comments about another. Prominent cases, such as the political John Doe vs. Patrick Cahill case, have not been in short supply. Many people have been taken to court because of derogatory or libelous remarks that they have posted online.

Shushing Bloggers

Confidentiality has also been another issue with posting on blogs. Despite their somewhat personal and journal-like nature, blogs and their contents are available to hundreds of millions of users worldwide through the internet. Many corporate employees and everyday individuals have found themselves in court because they confided information in their blog that, for some larger entities, should have been kept to themselves. Trade secrets and inside corporate information posted on blogs have been the cause of many a court case.

Despite their cryptic name and often humble appearance, blogs have become a ubiquitous feature of the online landscape. So far, they have become defining factors in the advent of user-generated content.

The first thing that one should point out is that Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) save the web designer time. As styles determine how the web page or web document will look; and because the style of a project is stored in an external file (.css), you can edit one file only and by doing so change all the web page’s styles at once.

CSS is considered ‘a breakthrough’ for web site designers because when a designer defines a particular style to an element (i.e. Header font and color); the designer can apply that element where he or she chooses. When the designer wishes to update or change that particular style, he or she simply edits the ‘.css’ file and the changes are global.

CSS styles are referenced in the <head> tags of a web page. These styles can be specified in one particular page or by an external Cascading Style Sheet file. Here is what the reference could look like:

<head>
<link href=”style.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css”>
</head>

There is an order in which styles will be applied in a document. This order is important when there is more than one style defined in a web document. Styles will cascade into a virtual style sheet in the following order. The highest priority belongs to the forth position.

1. Browser default
2. External style sheet
3. Internal style sheet (inside the <head> tag)
4. Inline style (inside an HTML element)

Order referenced from http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp

CSS is a primary designing tool for use on a variety of platforms. Even though all browsers do not yet support CSS; Cascading Style Sheets uses are further being explored for mobile phones (CSS Mobile Profile 1.0), printers (CSS Print Profile), and for browsers that operate on television sets (CSS TV Profile 1.0).

The development of CSS by the World Wide Web Consortium has created a powerful design tool which any web designer or developer should be familiar with.

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The resources on the WWW are written in hypertext, which is viewed with a program called a web browser — for example, Internet Explorer or Netscape. The web browser retrieves the resources, which are documents better known as web pages from web servers, to display them on your computer monitor. The act of following hyperlinks on the WWW is called ‘surfing’ or ‘browsing’ the Web.

The phrase ‘Surfing the Internet’ was coined by a librarian, Jean Armour Polly, in an article entitled ‘Surfing the INTERNET, which was published in June of 1992 in the Wilson Library Bulletin. Other similar terms were used on the Usenet news group in 1991 and 1992 and verbally before that in the hacker community.

The idea behind the World Wide Web can be traced back as far as 1980 when Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau built ENQUIRE. The concept of ENQUIRE was different from the Web we use today, but it did lay a foundation for the WWW as we know it. In 1989 Berners-Lee wrote ‘Information Management: A Proposal’, which described an even more elaborate management system for information. In 1990, he published a more formal proposal for the acutal World Wide Web (the one we have today) and the next day he wrote the first Web page. Later that year, Berners-Lee built the tools necessary for a live and working Web — the very first web browser which doubled as a Web editor and the first Web server.

The brilliant breakthrough that Berners-Lee had was to ‘marry’ hypertext to the Internet. He tackled the project himself and developed a system of globally unique identifiers for the resources that can be found on the Web and elsewhere — the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). Flash forward to the future, 3 years later in 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone for use, with no fees.

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